by Nick Ryder
“We should find the tribe and then you should come with us and point out the girl.”
“That seems like a solid plan,” I agreed.
“No,” Cara said. “I want to be involved in all of it. The future of my village relies on this plan. I won’t leave any of it up to chance.”
“We can give her one of the animals to ride,” Elaine said. “Then she’ll keep up easily enough. It’s not a big deal. We’ll want to be travelling with a bit of an entourage if we’re searching for the tribe anyway. If we’re caught off guard by them we want to be able to fight our way out.”
I gave Cara a long hard look, though she couldn’t tell I was focused on her. “Fine,” I said. “That makes sense. It’ll mean you’ll be away from the village most days though.”
“I can handle that. I might send someone in my stead some days.”
Silence fell on them, and it was Cara who broke it. She stood abruptly. “I’ll be going then.”
“I wish the earpieces worked at a bigger range,” Lisa said. “It would be good if we could stay in touch with you.”
“Earpieces?” Cara asked.
The earpieces they had worked on short range communication facilitated by the facility since the satellites had been knocked out of the sky. There was no way it would work as far as the village. They’d tested it and only managed a few hundred meters outside the facility before the communication started getting fuzzy.
“How are we going to stay in touch then?” Cara asked. “How will I know when we’re going exploring?”
“We’ll come and fetch you,” Lisa said. “That’s the only option, you move too slowly for us to wait until you get here.”
Cara shifted her weight. “Okay. Could you try and be subtle about it?”
Lisa looked at her flatly, an indication the getting to the village in a subtle manner was impossible, before nodding. “Sure.”
Another beat of silence.
“Okay, I’m going to head off.”
“Need a ride?” Elaine said. Cara frowned.
“Would you mind?”
“Of course not! Does anyone else want to come?”
They all declined, and Elaine took Cara to sub-level two to take a look at the animals and figure out what would work best as a horse-equivalent for Cara.
I stayed behind with Lisa and Marie. “What do you think?”
“I hate it,” Marie said without hesitation. “We’re going to kidnap a young girl so that her people come to get her and we can slaughter them. I hate it.”
“It sounds like she’s not exactly living the dream with the tribe. If she does want to get out…”
“If she does want to get out, then I’m sure this isn’t how she’s envisioning it.”
“We’ll know that when we talk to her.”
Marie laughed, and it was derisive. “Right. Talk to her. I’m sure that’s how it’s going to go down.”
“Don’t be so cynical,” Lisa said. “None of us want to hurt her.”
“Right. It’s only all the people she’s with that you want to hurt.”
“They tried to hurt us first.”
Marie sighed and stood up. “I’m going to bed.”
I followed her out of the room. When she got to her bed and curled down into it, I said, “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want my home to be overrun with people trying to kill me,” she replied. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep us safe. It doesn’t mean I’ll like what I’m doing, though.”
Chapter Twenty
Cara only came personally on the first trip to search for the tribe. Everyone agreed that they couldn’t be too far away from the village or the facility, and I made a plan for them to search the surrounding area systematically.
The girls had been out enough times that we had the area around the facility mapped pretty well, so I could both pinpoint where I thought would be good hiding places and create a grid structure for them to search in.
Ego helped me figure out, statistically, how much ground they could cover in a day while looking for clues.
“How long do you think it’ll take for them to be found?” I asked Ego.
Ego was silent for a moment. “At least three weeks.”
“Three weeks?”
“You have to factor in how big the area is and how quickly they’re moving. The tribe might move, too. If the tribe moves to an area already searched, then it won’t be until it’s searched a second or third time. We don’t know how close they are, whether they’ve gone further away before they intend to come back, whether they intend to come back at all. There are so many variables.”
“So they might have attacked again before we even find them.”
“It’s certainly possible.”
“Damn. We’re still sitting ducks then.”
“So start working on the facility again,” Ego said. “Make more traps. Improve your traps. That’s what I’m here for.”
“You’ve consumed thousands of media files. Do you have any ideas?”
“You want my input?”
“Of course.”
I could have sworn I heard a computer whirring somewhere, like he was purring. Together we spent the rest of the day reviewing the footage of the first attack and implementing improvements to the defenses of the facility.
Marie might not have been pleased about the plan as a whole, but she could at least be grateful when she came home and saw what I was doing.
Lisa was surprised when they approached the village and it was Cara who came down to meet them. The past week they’d had members of Cara’s inner circle helping them search for the tribe. They’d found a couple more patterns in the sand, but they were all older. They’d been disrupted by wind, or half-buried in sand.
Some of them were incredibly close to the village.
“Do you not send out patrols?” Lisa asked, though she knew the answer. They’d never seen any patrols, and they always kept an eye on the village.
Cara was visibly irritated by the question, and didn’t respond. “Where are we searching today?” She looked back over her shoulder. There were multiple faces watching her speak to the girls. “Let’s just go.”
Lisa stared straight back at the people, and read multiple reactions in their faces. Curiosity, anger, distrust. She was a point of contention in Cara’s leadership, then.
Probably the size of their group didn’t help anything. They looked like a small invasion force with the number of creatures with them. Four wolves, ten rats and a further dozen hybrids of various sorts.
It was a hybrid that Cara rode. A lizard enlarged to the same size at Elaine’s, but with pathetic wings and skin that was an ugly melt of scales and fur. It had a bit of everything in it, and most of the changes weren’t visible. They couldn’t see that it had better hearing, vision and smell than a regular lizard. Its job in the party was to sniff people out. That made it especially good as Cara’s mount – it would take her straight to anything interesting.
So far all they’d found was the corpses of animals that had succumbed to other predators in the desert.
“You’re coming yourself today?” Elaine struck up conversation immediately. They rode side-by-side on their lizards, moving at a rapid pace across the ground. Lisa led the charge, but she kept a keen ear on the conversation taking place.
Elaine was enamored with Cara, but Lisa didn’t hold the same level of trust for the girl. She was a leader, too, and she understood that the village would always come above the facility and those in it for Cara.
“I hate sitting around the village and watching other people run off, but I have to be there so that people know I’m there and in charge. The other tribe is doing nothing for bringing everyone together. They’re scared.”
“I’m sure we’ll have found them and sorted this whole mess out in no time, and things can go back to normal,” Elaine said.
Cara smiled, and was obviously holding things back. Lisa knew that e
ven before the tribe had showed up, things hadn’t been easy for Cara.
“Getting rid of the tribe will pull everyone together,” she said to Cara. “How could anyone deny your leadership when you’ve saved the village from invaders twice?”
Cara smiled, and it was real. It showed all her perfect teeth. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Everyone is so unsure about it all, but when they see how powerful I am in action once more, it’ll get rid of all of the doubts. I think I just tried to do too much in one go. Getting rid of the reds and the blues happened too quickly. It alienated people who would have been on my side if I’d maintained the teams.”
“Can they not see how it’s better to all be on the same side?” Elaine asked. “That’s just stupid. Especially when there are people threatening the village. Everyone against the outsiders. That makes way more sense.”
“To me and you, definitely. But people are stuck in their ways.”
“I guess it’s always been that way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Back before the change. The world was split into countries. At the end it felt like it was America, here, against the world. But then even inside America there are republicans and democrats, and then inside those political parties there are even more splits. What matters is that you come together when it matters, I suppose.”
“How do you know all that?” Cara was stunned by it all. Lisa was on edge about the conversation.
“I remember it.”
Cara laughed. “Please. You can’t be older than thirty. There’s no way.”
“No, but my brain was put into stasis when the change happened. I was nearly fatally injured and brought to the facility. Sol reanimated me. That’s why I’m in this cat body.”
“Reanimated.”
“I don’t know all the science behind it.”
“That’s crazy.”
Elaine lifted a shoulder, looking completely at ease despite the speed at which the lizard beneath her was moving. Cara, normally graceful, was holding on for dear life.
“It’s just the way it is,” Elaine said.
“So that’s how he’s doing it with all the monsters? Just reanimating them?”
“Oh no. We create those from scratch. It’s all science-y, I don’t know precisely how it works. Sol is in charge of all that. We all feel so awful for him because he’s stuck in that computer. I know he hates that he’s not out here with us right now.”
“Why doesn’t he reanimate himself a body?”
“He’s working on it.”
“Won’t it be strange for you when he has a body?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you must have gotten used to him just kind of being everywhere all at once, and to having time away from him out here, where he can’t follow.”
“I don’t know, maybe it will be a bit strange at first, but no more so than any of us being around the facility. I think we’re all looking forward to being able to have a face to read instead of trying to guess what he’s thinking from the intonation in his voice. And he really wants this, so we all want it for him.”
“So he’s not like… your master then? I always got the sense that he was in charge.”
“He is in charge, but that’s because he’s the expert. And it’s his facility. He’s the system, and we’ll all think of him as that even when he’s in a body instead of the computer.”
“It’s so alien to me.”
“You get used to it surprisingly quickly.”
“I’d like to spend more time there, to understand it better.”
“I’ll have to speak to Sol and see what he says. He likes company. We’re all starved of normal human relations, compared to how it was before the change. I can’t even imagine what Chicago looks like now.”
“Chicago?” The word sounded clumsy from her lips.
“It was where I used to live. A city. Over a million people.”
“My village has two hundred and fifty.”
“Exactly. All of this is alien to me.”
“You should come and spend a couple of nights at the village some time,” Cara suggested. “See what it’s like up there. Since you’re talking about wanting more human contact and stuff. There aren’t millions, but it’s more than the facility. And it might help my people get used to you, to realize that you’re not something they have to worry about.”
“That might be fun,” Elaine agreed. “I’ll definitely do that some time.”
Lisa frowned, but had to admit the thought of being around other people was appealing. She hadn’t grown up anywhere as big as Chicago, but even her small town in Nebraska of about 10,000 people seemed like Manhattan compared to how they were living now.
Sometimes she was unbearably lonely.
Elaine was completely right about Sol getting his body – it would change things. He would seem more like a person than he did now. Now, sometimes it was difficult to tell Sol and Ego apart. Sometimes it would take Lisa a few seconds to realize which one of them was speaking. The Ego that had sounded like an old-fashioned text-to-speech program didn’t exist anymore.
Having Sol in front of them, being able to see the smile she swore she could sometimes hear, was an intoxicating thought.
And she knew that there were still more brains ready for reanimation back at the facility. She’d been meaning to ask him when he intended to bring back more people. Maybe someone she could be closer to. She knew being the leader set her apart, but sometimes when she watched the closeness between Elaine and Marie she became impossibly bitter.
The bird Sol had made for her was a nice thought, but it was no substitute for human closeness and they both knew it.
“Here,” Lisa said, pulling to a halt. “This is the start of the quadrant we’re searching today.”
The girls pulled up at the side of her to take a good look at the map.
“Paper is hugely valuable in the village,” Cara said, reaching out as though she was going to touch it and then thinking twice.
“It’s in limited supply in the facility as well.” Technically true, but they had an entire supply room stocked with printer paper. They definitely weren’t feeling the pinch on it yet, and they barely used it.
“So, stick together or split up?” Cara asked.
“Stick together. If we do find anything the last thing we want is to be unable to fight.”
“You think it’ll come down to a fight?” Cara flexed the arm that held her halberd, and Lisa thought she looked ready for a fight rather than worried about having to take one.
“Well I don’t think that they’ll let us just walk into their camp and steal one of their women, no.”
Cara rolled her eyes. “Right.”
“Let’s go, then,” Elaine said, back stiff as a board.
Marie had been quiet for the entire ride out, and Lisa held back to run at the side of her for a moment. She moved slower than the rest due to her build, and Lisa kept the pace of the whole group steady to accommodate it, because Marie preferred to run than to ride another creature.
“You okay?” Lisa asked.
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
“I feel icky about this whole thing.”
“I know, but if we had another alternative we’d use it.”
“I know that. And I told Sol that I’d do it and I will, I just… there are barely any people around here as it is, you know? Why have we got to go killing ones that aren’t us?”
“We’re defending ourselves, not attacking them.”
“No we’re not, we’re trying to trap them in the facility so Sol can steal their superpowers for himself.”
“Don’t be cynical Marie.” She kept her voice down, looking ahead to Elaine and Cara who were still chatting animatedly. “You know that’s not true. They attacked us first, and we know they’re going to attack us again. We have to make some kind of aggressive move so they don’t just run us over when they catch us by surprise. We can’t just sit idly by
.”
“I’m not saying we should, but all of this, you really think it’s just about that? He wants to get super powers. He wants to make that stupid body he’s creating obscenely powerful.”
“Is that a bad thing? He wants to keep the facility safe. Having a powerful body will do that.”
“He’s obsessed.”
“He’s a brain in a jar. I’m not surprised he’s a bit obsessed. And Ego is in there with him too, constantly.”
“Stop making excuses.”
Lisa realized that she was, and held her tongue, thinking her next words through before saying them. “We owe everything to Sol.”
“That doesn’t–”
“Let me finish. We owe everything to him, but that doesn’t mean I’m just going to sit back and let him do something I think is wrong. I think he’s obsessed with creating that body,” she admitted. “But I understand it and I don’t think it’s a problem yet. Him focusing on it so much hasn’t stopped him making defending the facility – and us – his top priority. I wouldn’t be going through with this plan if I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. Sol might get some super powers out of it, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but most importantly the threat will be gone. That’s what I care about.”
Marie sighed, but she nodded as best she could while running across the ground. “Okay,” she said. “I trust you. I trust both of you. But I do still feel icky about it.”
“Not everything about war feels good.”
“You really want to label this a war?”
“Yeah. I think so. It’s us against the world. That’s how this existence works right now. We’re always going to be at war.”
“How exhausting.”
Lisa laughed and made her way back to the head of the column to begin properly leading their search. It was like a very sped up version of the kind of searching that the police did in crime dramas when searching for evidence. They were in a grid, moving in straight lines, their gazes to the ground in case they saw anything.
She knew there was a chance they would crush a pattern left by the tribal girl underfoot and miss it, but it was a chance they had to take. She’d asked Ego about the time frame they were looking at, and his answer hadn’t given her much optimism.